15 April 2005	Friday	05 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

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NEW DELHI, April 14: In startling revelations about Muslims pogrom in Gujarat during 2002, Additional Director General of Gujarat Police RB Sreekumar said that Chief Minister Narindera Modi and his bureaucrats had issued illegal orders including elimination of minorities in 2002.

“They also distorted the facts about the actual situation in the state during his tenure as state intelligence chief,” Sreekumar added in his explosive submission to the Central Administrative Tribunal, according to a news report carried by leading Indian daily ‘Times of India’ in Thursday’s issue.

Sreekumar also told about how Modi himself issued instructions to tape the phones of state Congress chief S.Vaghela, his former cabinet minister Haren Pandya and certain Muslim police officers.

He has made the revelations in a blow-by-blow account in a “semi-official” diary annexed to his petition before the tribunal, the report said.

The diary contains details of his interactions as additional DGP (intelligence) between April 16 and September 19, 2002, with Narindera Modi and other officials.

An entry of June 28, 2002, says that after a meeting to discuss preparations for the forthcoming rath yatra, the Chief Secretary G Subbarao told Sreekumar: “If someone is trying to disturb the rath yatra or planning to spoil the same that person be eliminated,” added the report.

Sreekumar said that Modi rubbished a note prepared by him on the communal situation at a meeting on May 7, 2002, and asked him to concentrate on “Muslim militants”.

Modi told him not to concentrate on Sangh Parivar as they were not doing anything illegal. In fact, Modi said he would provide him intelligence on the Sangh Parivar, he added, according to the report.

Sreekumar notes how top bureaucrats in the state did not like his candid presentation before Chief Election Commission J M Lyngdoh on the prevailing scenario in the state at that time.

He was even admonished for giving a reply that did not conform to that given by then Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani before parliament, the report said. —APP